Lent 2 2013

Lent 2, 2013

A couple of years ago while I was working at St. Alban’s, we had a day long retreat with a man by the name of Peter Rollins. Not to be confused with Henry Rollins, the one time lead singer of the punk band Black Flag—however, in a way, Peter Rollins has become something of a ‘rock star’ in the emergent church world.

He’s known for a number of books and articles, not to mention his speaking engagements—and he’s even been called the “darling” of the emergent church movement.

And while I’d say that I agree with a lot of what Peter Rollins says, there are some things that I have a hard time accepting. Nothing opposed to orthodox faith, necessarily—but stuff, which betrays a lack of understanding about the Church in a more universal sense.

Now, just to give you some idea of who Peter Rollins is; he’s from Northern Ireland and spent a lot of time in academe studying philosophy and theology and has made a name for himself writing on both of these subjects as they relate to the modern Church.

Where he has become particularly well known is in the emergent church movement—this group of people who are trying to postulate how the Church can remain relevant in our culture today…

 Anyway, like a lot of emergent church writers, Peter Rollins spends a lot of time dazzling hip, young Evangelical pastors by talking about lofty and inspired ideas. He asks pertinent questions about how and why the Church acts and reacts in certain ways—and he even rightly challenges some of the conventions of the modern Church.

Like I said, it sounds inspired—and in reality it is—because none of it is new.

 In fact, much of what Peter Rollins talks about in his work is exactly what many of the writers and thinkers of the Early and Medieval Church were writing in their time.

So, inspired? Yes—but not new.

After reading some of Peter Rollins’ stuff, I would say that he would be the first to agree. In fact, much of the thesis of his book “How (not) to speak of God” references Christian Mystics and Early Church Fathers to make his arguments.

The problem that I find, however, as I mentioned earlier, is that writer’s like Peter Rollins portray a very limited vision of the Church. Understandably, like other emergent Church writers, he’s coming from an Evangelical perspective. So, there isn’t this present sense of tradition and connection to the historic Church—and outside of academic institutions, theological resources are somewhat limited. So, we have to keep all of these things in mind when we talk about his work and popularity.

 And while I’m picking on Peter Rollins specifically(who is still one of the more promising emergent church writers), he’s only representative of a wider conversation which seems to continue to get stuck in the trap of trying to make the Church ‘relevant.’

It’s this particular idea of relevance that I find most interesting—mostly because it seems to be the rallying cry of so many Church institutions these days. This idea that we need to make ourselves more relevant to the culture so that we can reclaim some glory that we had in the past…

For many groups this often means changing the physical space in which people meet, and even re-imagining how a church service is done.

Others still—many in mainline and more traditional denominations have decided that the best course of action is to start doing what many Evangelical churches did in the 1970s and 80s with the inclusion of “Contemporary Christian Music” in worship services—as well as more informal, conversational sermons.

 Unfortunately, as I said, these were innovations in the 1970s and 80’s. And seeing as membership decline isn’t just the problem of the traditional churches, anymore; it questions just how inspired such a plan of action really is…

All the same, a couple of issues begin to emerge out of this. One issue is that, as the Church, it seems we’re really not very clear about our own identity. So either we’ve done a terrible job of keeping that discussion of identity constantly in front of us as a reminder; or we’ve confused our true identity with who we think we ought to be.

The second issue is related to the first, and that is this problem of confusing relevance with faddism. 

In other words, there is this sense that our culture needs Jesus Christ to show up with a 5 o’clock shadow and skinny jeans before we’ll listen to him. The problem here, of course (beyond the satire) is that if we begin to constantly try to institutionalize things that are passing like fads, we’re doomed to perpetual irrelevance.

However, the staying power of the work of people like Peter Rollins, is that the message of God’s salvation is far more relevant in its simplicity than we could ever try to make it. It turns out, when people experience that truth, imbedded in the work of the emergent church, or anywhere for that matter, they are naturally attracted to it.

 Because no matter how our culture and society changes—what never changes is the need for hope and love. More importantly, we will always need to have meaning for our lives, as well as the hope that we somehow matter in the grander scheme of things.

This is why we’re called, as the Church, to be a structure that rests on a solid foundation, so that we can offer stability in a constantly shifting world.

This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t be self-aware, and prepared to grow beyond unnecessary things to stay true to the Gospel. The world shouldn’t starve spiritually because we’re afraid to kill sacred cows. Sometimes we need to make holy hamburgers…

But as long as we can focus on being faithful to live into the basic call of loving God with all of our hearts, souls and minds; and loving our neighbor as ourselves—I believe the extraneous, gimmicky trappings of church will not matter anymore. Because the issue of relevance will always be answered in our constant longing to fulfill the command to love, and to point beyond ourselves to the Living God in our worship and in our lives…something that will always speak to our culture and to our world.